Been watching a lot of movies on the system of late....and I must say, at 16:9, filling the entire tv screen, really is a nice experience. now, I have a lot of the wider films in the library, and I'm wondering if I should crop them to true 16:9.
Having no black bars is actually rather nice.

Anyone else doing this?

I did consider this for tv shows, but in the reverse obviously, lopping off some of the bottom to achieve the same effect.

I'm sure there are tons of people who do it, and of course it is nice to have the screen filled, but that is something to petition with directors, don't throw away 20% of the movie just so it fills your living room TV.

Agree, but then, we lived with with this cropping for many years on normal over the air tv and liked it. Mind you, it's probably why going to the movies was such a better experience!!

TV shows were never cropped in the past. They were filmed natively for 4:3 Aspect Ratio TVs. Directors filmed them and meant for them to be seen in that ratio. Now that has changed, and directors instead film for 2.35:1, so cropping is throwing away things the directors meant to have. With old TV shows you would just be adding stuff that was never supposed to be there.

That is only partially true. If you recall from back then, most DVD's and VHS tapes had notices at the beginnings saying "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your TV."

This meant the director did one of two things. Either he squished the picture together to fit everything (making people look skinny and funny), or he decided to crop. They would only make the decision to crop, however, if it was decided that they could crop things not important to the scene.

They would also change cropping areas dependent on the scene. For example, they would crop 100 pixels (not actual numbers) off each side on most uses, but if a scene had a character far to the left, they would take 200 pixels (again not actual numbers) off the right, and leave the left fully intact.

This kept the important bits on the screen, and the non important bits were left to waste.

Agree re TV shows...but movies traditionally have always been wider. Those we lived with and watch happily in 4:3

I was glad when they started showing movies in their original aspect ratio, but it made them pretty small on my old 20" 4:3 TV. So, when I got my 16:9 TV, I made sure that I got one that was big enough to make it comfortable watching letterboxed movies.

I like to see the whole image, but I'm interested in cinematography and hate to miss subtle pieces of the story that might get cut off on the edges. I don't really notice the bars anymore, but every once and a while I will notice that a film on TV looks a little odd or awkward and realize that they have cropped a film for broadcast.

Perhaps I would crop films if my eyesight got any worse and I couldn't afford a larger TV, but I think I would always be looking to see if I thought anything was missing.

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and other factors? I certainly t
ill the screen and miss things,
ack bars, but who want to have
gger? Crop away then, and you
. On that we can all agree I'm s

Oh yeah, that's why not.

__________________
I really wish Apple would use the option key a little more, and the command key a little less.*soundcloud/fdporco*

ing wrong with doing it becaus
rmore they're your movies so
and other factors? I certainly t
ill the screen and miss things,
ack bars, but who want to have
gger? Crop away then, and you
. On that we can all agree I'm s

Oh yeah, that's why not.

Ahahahahahahahahaha at first I thought I was reading a post from a moron. Then I realized you were a genius.

Of course it has long been established that civilized patrons of film watch the movie in the aspect ratio intended by "the artist" and god help those blasphemous heathens who actually don't mind losing some periphery for the sake of a bigger and clearer picture. But, for those of us too stupid to appreciate the finer things in life, how would one go about cropping the film in handbrake?

Now last night, I watched LOTR part 2, via cable TV, and it was cropped to fill the screen. Most enjoyable! And that's a movie that's meant for the 'full experience'.

Now let me add, I have a 64" Plasma, 6 months old, so watching uncropped movies is not a chore by any means. But I reiterate, using the full screen,damn nice experience.

Now before anyone goes feral on me, I have NO intention of cropping my movies. But if you get the chance, watch the same movie, undistorted, just cropped, and tell me honestly, was it such a bad difference.

My 18 yo daughter watched it withme, totally unaware I started this discussion here, and I asked her if she enjoyed it, full screen. 'Yes'. Then I mentioned this thread to her, and she also said she would not crop movies, but admitted, her mind did not realize it was cropped. And she's watched it many times on my ATV system.

So, really, when it's done without prior warning, do we actually notice it?

"This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your TV."

I kid you guys not, I dated a girl once when we were watching a movie and that little notice came up and my girlfriend looked at me with a straight face "how do they know how big your TV is?"
I knew she was an idiot, but didn't know how bad until that night.

Regarding this question, remember that when cropped "optimally" they have the opportunity to always ensure that the key action is on screen and not cropped. If you were to try cropping with Handbrake it'd simply be a blanket chop-job and whatever was omitted would simply be a function of what pixels were removed.

I find it very unsatisfying to watch a 2.35:1 movie on my 4:3 iPad screen. You can double-tap the screen and the movie will be zoomed to fill the screen, but that results in much too much cropping.

Since the iPad gives you no intermediate zoom option, I have changed the way I rip many movies. Rather than allowing HandBrake to automatically crop out the black bars at the top and bottom of movies that are wider than 16:9, I leave them in. That makes the movie appear to be 1280x720, rather than 1280x544. It looks normal when played, but when you double tap the iPad, it does a more modest zoom, resulting in an aspect ratio of about 1.75:1. I usually find this more pleasing than either the super-skinny 2.35:1 image or the grossly cropped 4:3 image. If I feel I am missing significant portions of the image, I just revert to the unzoomed view.

BTW - leaving the the blank lines in the movie has a very small affect on the size of the encoded movie since the static black areas are compressed to almost nothing by the encoding.